37 weeks…. eep!

Well, we’re inching closer and closer to the due date. The cashier with the slicked back hair and bracelets at Lidl (I think his name is Jamie) commented today about how I’ve been going there for ages and that I hadn’t popped yet. No kidding. As of yesterday, there’s three weeks left. Three! Holy shit! We’re still unprepared, although perhaps less unprepared than we were before. There’s still things that need to be acquired (Change mat! Drawers! Towels! Pads! Diaper pail! Baby wash! The kitchen sink!), and Raspberry’s new bed hasn’t arrived yet. The latter is a source of niggling concern for Lucas, but even though I know you can’t fit all four of us into a double bed (not to mention it isn’t safe for wiggly Raspberry to sleep in the same bed as a newborn), I’m not as worried as he is about getting the bed on time. We’re slowly getting our act together. Did I mention how cool it’d be if the baby arrives on its expected due date of the 24th? Cool, because exactly a month later is Raspberry’s birthday, and exactly a month from that is mine. Yeah, that’d be wild.

There’s been traces of glucose in my urine the past few months when I’ve visited the midwife, and despite the fact that I did a glucose tolerance test and came out of it with flying colours (if you can say such a thing about such a test), I was still a little curious and concerned. The midwife, who’s pretty laid-back, wasn’t too worried and said I could get a random glucose test done if I wanted. So I did that, just a few days before Christmas. I also wanted to get a blood count done, to see if the iron pills were working too. It turns out, my hemoglobin’s up, and my glucose is fine, so yay. At times though, I’ve still been feeling a bit winded from just doing perfectly unstrenuous activities. Lucas says that’s probably just because I’m 37 weeks pregnant. Ha. A few days back, I think I had some Braxton-Hicks contractions while I was doing the dishes. I say “think,” because I’ve never had them before so I wasn’t really sure. But they disappeared after I paused to change my position, so maybe they were.

At the appointment with the midwife on Thursday, she felt around and wasn’t sure if the baby had turned yet, so I had a presentation scan done at the hospital yesterday. It was the shortest medical appointment I’ve ever had, and we even got three free pictures out of it. They’re all of the baby’s face close-up (or at least two are), so it’s hard to make it out if you don’t know what you’re looking at, but I still like that we have grainy pictures of it. The sonographer pointed out the baby’s facial features and an arm, and Raspberry emphasized that we didn’t want to know the baby’s sex. Anyway, I wasn’t too worried if the baby hadn’t turned yet because there’s still time but apparently, it has. No worries about a breech baby then, I suppose. It’s been kicking a lot on my left side since yesterday, but I think it’s been doing that for a while and I’ve just noticed it more since I now know it has turned. I’ve definitely noticed it’s harder to sit in certain positions, like sitting leaning forward (and the baby still doesn’t like that and never seems to have) and sometimes, even now, I forget that I have the belly and that it precludes me from moving certain ways. Yeah, it’s weird, I know.

I’ve been trying to get a decent video of the baby wiggling around but every time it makes some visibly significant movement, I don’t have my camera handy. Like the one morning I was lying in bed with Lucas and some body part just stuck right out like a mountain. That was awesome, but of course, the camera wasn’t nearby. It seems to like moving around a lot when I lie on my back, like when I’m at the midwife’s or the ultrasound, or even when my friend Aurelie (who’s a midwife) came over to lend Raspberry some midwifery supplies and books, and was showing Raspberry how to listen and feel for the baby. Those seem to be the times when the baby decides to move, not when I have the camera trained on it. Figures.

I’ve been having the worst time sleeping. It’s reminiscent of the month before Raspberry was born. I remember waking up really early — like five-ish — and not being able to get back to sleep, so I’d just get up, since five is a somewhat reasonable time to get out of bed. The time however, I’m waking in the middle of the night — we’re talking three, four, five o’clock — and I lie there for an hour-and-a-half to two hours on our shitty mattress with the springs digging into various bodily crevices, trying desperately to get back to sleep but just can’t. Argh. Lucas suggests I should just get up to do something and then go back to sleep after, but I don’t foresee that working out, as once I’m up and about, I think it’ll just be harder to shut my brain up to get back to sleep. The only way I seem to be able to sleep through the night is when I’m utterly exhausted, like after we went to Birmingham a few weeks ago, but that’s an expensive (albeit, fun) way to ensure a good night’s sleep. It’s probably something to do with the baby that’s keeping me up, although I’m not sure what exactly, and I would certainly like it to stop. I can’t keep spending two hours awake every other night and waking up zombified. It’s terrible when I’m excited just because I slept through the night.

Despite my griping, I’m still going to miss being pregnant and it’s been a relatively easy pregnancy. I can’t believe it feels like it’s gone by so quickly. This is the part where I’m nostalgic for a pregnancy that hasn’t even concluded yet. The same thing happened the last time, and it’ll probably happen again after the baby’s born. Anyway, still some stuff to do in the few weeks left, and we should get our asses in gear just so we can at least not continue freaking out about being unprepared!

The baby doesn’t have a name actually :) It’ll probably be nameless for a few weeks (like Raspberry was, before we ended up with Aurora but changed it anyway!) until we feel out its personality and figure out a name for it.